Two things shape the course of your life: luck and your decisions (with Annie Duke)

Should people spend more time becoming better decision-makers? What are the main things that determine how our lives turn out? What's wrong with pro / con lists? When should we deviate from making decisions based on expected value calculations? What kinds of uncertainty might we encounter in the decision-making process? Are explicit decision calculations self-defeating? How similar is intuitive decision-making to decision-making that's based on calculations? How useful are heuristics? How can we know which decisions are significant enough to warrant calculations? What makes a decision hard? What's the omission / commission bias? What lessons can we learn from monkeys and pedestals? Should decision-making strategies be taught in primary and secondary schools?

Annie Duke is an author, speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Her latest book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, was released in 2022 from Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint. Her previous book, Thinking in Bets, is a national bestseller. As a former professional poker player, she has won more than $4 million in tournament poker, has won a World Series of Poker bracelet, and is the only woman to have won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the NBC National Poker Heads-Up Championship. She is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission is to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or via her website, AnnieDuke.com; or subscribe to her newsletter on Substack.

Further reading

• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts, by Annie Duke
• Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, by Annie Duke
• How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, by Annie Duke
• The Alliance for Decision Education

Staff

• Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
• Josh Castle — Producer
• Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
• Uri Bram — Factotum
• WeAmplify — Transcriptionists
• Alexandria D. — Research and Special Projects Assistant

Music

• Broke for Free
• Josh Woodward
• Lee Rosevere
• Quiet Music for Tiny Robots
• wowamusic
• zapsplat.com

Affiliates

• Clearer Thinking
• GuidedTrack
• Mind Ease
• Positly
• UpLift